Loose Tweets Sink Ships

The plan worked. From August 22 to August 25, the hashtag was used more than 159,000 thousand times, according to data gathered by Topsy, a social media analytics firm. Some of these tweets were bought, others were posted organically, and still more appeared to be the result of IS opponents trying to hijack the hashtag (at least 59,233 of the tweets contained a message saying that Saudi Arabia suffers from terrorism — perhaps a sign of a paid-for counter-campaign). But the result was the same, as IS was able to grab more attention for itself.

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Whether that attention works in its favor is another matter. Although IS is known for showing discipline in its military operations, its aggressive media operation may expose more than it would like — something on the order of “Loose Tweets Sink Ships.” Last week on Bellingcat, the new journalism site started by British freelancer Eliot Higgins (a.k.a. @brown_moses), an anonymous contributor used publicly available photos — posted by an IS affiliate on JustPaste.It — to find the probable location of an IS training camp along the Euphrates River in Iraq’s Nineveh Province. The next day, Higgins published a post in which he narrowed down the apparent site of James Foley’s execution to the hills south of Raqqa, IS’s main stronghold in Syria.

If a couple of journalists, working independently, are able to glean this kind of information, Western intelligence agencies should be able to do so as well. They’re not the only ones potentially watching. After some members were chased from Twitter, IS began setting up shop on Vkontakte, the Russian social networking site. In January, VK’s founder, Pavel Durov, sold his shares to mogul Alisher Usmanov, one of the Kremlin’s favored oligarchs; in April, Durov fled the country. The company is now assumed to be fully under the thumb of Putin’s regime. The site also requires a phone number in order to register — the very sort of information, along with an IP address, that IS would not want to give to a close ally of Bashar al-Assad, one of their main enemies. (VK did not respond to requests for comment.)

So despite IS’s reputation as a master of social media, the truth is more complicated: IS does make use of a variety of cutting-edge tools and often very cleverly. But its messaging can be unfocused, and its relative success has been aided by tapping into the global fan base of Internet users sympathetic to the jihadist message and from the apparently lax or murky content policies of some platform owners. Twitter, for example, began shutting down Al-Shabaab accounts when the Somali terrorist group was tweeting about its attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, yet enforcement has been spotty ever since. (The company refused to comment for this article except to offer a link to its rules.)

When it’s not distributing gruesome photos and videos, IS media does display a veneer of professionalism. Its “Al Hayat Media center”—the Islamic State’s propaganda wing—issues annual reports and a slickly produced English-language magazine, and its Al Furqan division publishes videos of IS members providing social services, explaining why they decided to go on jihad or fighting in battle. These videos often include subtitles in a number of languages, including English, French, Danish, Russian, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali.

The larger IS media apparatus, including the sprawling community of social media accounts that helped to distribute the Foley video, is actually made up of three interconnected factions. First, there is Al Hayat, Al Furqan and official IS media. Each IS province also has its own media office, which often helps to promote officially sanctioned hashtags or to push content to supporters. Some of their Twitter accounts were shut down in the first couple weeks of August, but they also make use of other media channels, including the website alplatformmedia.com/vb/.

Beyond that, there are what might be called “unofficial official” IS accounts, which are connected to the IS organization and arguably are the most important part of its media presence. “They’re really where the action happens,” says J.M. Berger, who studies jihadi social media. A member of this second tier of IS media originally posted the Foley video on Twitter.

Although some have been banned, these accounts tend to quickly return with a new handle similar to their old one. For example, @AbuUmar_8246 is not the first account of a man calling himself Abu Umar Al-Ansari, who points followers to a Wordpress site (and recently, a Vkontakte page) where he maintains news of his suspensions and new identities. These users might also offer an alibi in their profile — “I’m not part of ISIS. I’m just posting news” — or set their accounts to private (which hides their tweets and gives them the ability to reject would-be followers). In the immediate aftermath of the Foley video, members of this group could be seen advising one another to temporarily deactivate their accounts to avoid scrutiny. And when these IS affiliates start new accounts after being shut down, their colleagues promote them on Twitter, welcoming them back and urging people to follow them again.

Jacob Silverman’s book, Terms of Service: Social Media, Surveillance, and the Price of Constant Connection, will be published by HarperCollins next year.